Engraving a cornerstone for the ages

Following tradition, George Washington’s farewell address is read in the Senate each year.

Actually it wasn’t a speech but an 18th century version of today’s op-ed article that was printed in the “American Daily Advertiser” on Sept. 19, 1796. It was passed out in the streets of Philadelphia as President Washington’s carriage was rolling home to Mount Vernon. And it was largely written by Alexander Hamilton.

The idea of a valedictory was first suggested to him by James Madison at the end of his first term. But Washington yielded to his sense of duty and decided to serve for another four years.

He felt that the republic was too fragile because conflict between France and Britain threatened to embroil the young nation.

Of all the heroic qualities Washington possessed, one was not a thick skin. A proud man, he was sensitive to the innuendo and calumnies bruited about by the partisans of Thomas Jefferson’s fledgling Democratic-Republican Party. Washington had once admired his younger fellow Virginian plantation owner. He had valued Jefferson’s erudition and he had appointed him his secretary of state when Alexander Hamilton was pushing John Jay for the top cabinet post. Jay who had been Hamilton’s co-author of the Federalist Papers had served as foreign secretary under the Articles of Confederation.

But Washington had become estranged from his fellow Virginian who played the anti-Royalist card in his campaign to build up his new party in the young nation.

When Washington set down his thoughts in 1796, he wrote that he had done his best and noted that he had arrived at an age when retirement was necessary and that in any case rotation in office helps sustain liberty. He then came to his central concern, a warning that the country should avoid unnecessary alliances. What followed was a bitter outburst from the usually stoic Washington. He penned a spate of words that only proved what they tried to deny.

Washington had shared Alexander Hamilton’s vision of a commercial and manufacturing America. He chose Hamilton’s view of America’s future, not Jefferson’s of small farmers. Hamilton had returned from his Treasury office in Philadelphia to his New York law office. The 40-year-old Hamilton must have winced as he read the letter packet from President Washington. For the disciplined general to give vent to such an emotional tirade was not typical. The essence of Washington was his bearing, the fixed blue eyes that instilled in people a sense of awe.

Hamilton was the arch-foe of Jefferson’s new Democratic-Republican Party. Hamilton was a Federalist but even more so an imperialist, the first in America. He was the bastard son of a Scottish merchant and his creole mistress. Hamilton had no roots in the colonies. He was not a Virginian like Washington or a “Massachusetts man” like John Adams. He was an American.

Washington realized on reading Hamilton’s draft that it was right to scrap his emotional defense. Washington also agreed with Hamilton’s statement that the central government must be “strong enough” to withstand the “enterprises of faction.” Washington left untouched Hamilton’s assertion on the importance of establishing public credit. He also left intact the key phrases of Hamilton’s principles of foreign policy.

In Washington’s request of him to fashion a draft of a Farewell Address, Hamilton saw an opportunity to write a political equivalent of a last will and testament. By making the Farewell Address a set of foreign policy principles, he could finesse Washington’s defensive outburst.

The first problem was how to begin — or rather how to turn farewell sentiments into foreign policy principles. As a practicing trial lawyer, Hamilton knew how to establish the authority of a star witness. Here Hamilton was raising Washington above the political controversies of the day and imputing to him the lofty objective that only disinterest in office and denial of any further ambition can impart.

Washington had advised neutrality on the basis of his experience. Hamilton would lift it to the realm of political science. What seemed practical to Washington was treated by Hamilton as immutable principle. In revising Washington’s first draft for a valedictory, Hamilton transformed it into a political testament. “Excessive partiality for one nation and excessive delight for another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side and high motives on their own. The great role of conduct for us in regards to foreign Nations is extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political conversation as possible.”

Washington grasped Hamilton’s reasoning that our special geography afforded us a diplomatic advantage:

“Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand on foreign ground? Why by intertwining our destiny with that of any part of Europe entangle our peace and prosperity in the tide of European ambition, rivalship, humor or caprice?”

But Washington did not sense from Hamilton’s draft that he was positioning himself as the patriarch passing down the tablet for the ages. Rather, he saw himself as an elder statesman guarding his most important accomplishment: the Act of Neutrality of 1793. But actually the words in time became the Gospel of Saint George with Hamilton as the apostle writing the epistle.

Jefferson would paraphrase in his first inaugural saying “no entangling alliances.” Monroe would codify it in the Monroe Doctrine. Later foreign policy statements of both Polk and Cleveland would be rooted in this Farewell Address. Woodrow Wilson would interpret no entangling alliances as no covert alliances.

Franklin Roosevelt would take “no entangling alliances” as no alliances with the Axis as a justification for the Lend Lease Act of 1941.

If Alexander Hamilton is the first presidential speechwriter, he also may be the greatest. He took the authority and prestige of George Washington to engrave a cornerstone of American foreign policy for the ages.